Phantom entries on 'smart' playlists

I have itunes set so that after I watch a podcast, it is deleted at the next update. This part seems to work ok, however, it will delete the episode from the library list, but it will still appear in a smart playlist with an exclamation because the file was deleted by itunes at the time it updated my padcasts. Live updating is checked.
I have tried removing then subscribing to the podcast again, as well as re-adding the folder to the library. No joy.

I have the same problem. Anybody have an answer?

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Phantom songs showing up in smart playlists

When creating a smart playlist for a podcast recently, i noticed two songs showed up with that icon that says the file can't be found. I want to get rid of them, but I can't figure out where they are in my library. Apparently itunes still has these records in my library... somewhere, but the only place they show up is by matching the smart playlist search. Normal search, as in through the search box, doesn't turn them up.
Has anyone else had this happen? I would really like to "delete" these records, if for the sake of cleanliness than anything, but I can't find them except in the smart playlist, and you cannot delete through playlists, as far as I know.
Macbook Mac OS X (10.4.9) iTunes 7.1.1

Hi,
I'm not sure about the odd files showing in Smart playlist and not in the library issue, but you can delete songs from the library via a playlist - just hold the alt (option) key and Delete key
Regards

Smart playlists no longer update dynamically

I have several smart playlists that have a couple of rules... one based on rating and one based on whether or not it is present in a regular playlist. When I change the rating of a song so that it no longer meets the smart playlist's criteria, it remains in the list. It will not update until I sync with the PC. The other criteria, the "regular" playlist, isn't updated... and is present on the iPod as well in my iTunes library, so that's not the issue. I'm running the latest greatest version of iTunes and the iPod touch is a model PD721LL/A, version 8.2; it has over 15GB free, so space isn't a challenge either.
I suspect that there is some sequence of settings that will allow this to update dynamically, but I'm not sure what that would be or where to even attempt it.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks in advance,
Laura Tieri

My results differ from yours.
With iOS 4.0x, 4.1 and 4.2x my smart playlists with live updating were broken. It would start with track 1 of 5, then 2 of 4, then 3 of 3, 4 of 2, then would generally crash the iPod app. If I left the playlist and re-entered it would have removed the entries already played, but I would find that some of the entries that should have played had actually been skipped in m playlist.
With iOS 4.3, my playlists are properly working for me again. Now they play 1 of 5, 2 of 5, 3 of 5, ... If I return to the playlist while it is playing, I see that the entries that have already played are removed, and if I leave the playlist to return later, it starts over a 1 of 2, 2 of 2...
I have posted another thread of how I have my playlists defined, so perhaps that would help you. I do recall that there were some conditions that used to cause problems if used in a smart playlist.

Smart Playlists no longer updated with iOS 4.3 on iPhone 4

I've run into an issue with the latest iOS 4.3 update: my smart playlists are no longer dynamically being updated on my iPhone 4.
All of my main playlists are smart: they exclude songs that I've played in the past week. Earlier today when I'd play a song and it went to the next one, it'd immediately remove the song from the playlist (so I was always on track 1 of XXX). With 4.3, this is no longer happening and the smart playlist only dynamically updates when I sync my phone with my computer. This is annoying because it means that I can end up hearing the same song again if I switch playlists.
Anyone else run into this? Any fixes? I tried rebooting my phone to no avail.

My results differ from yours.
With iOS 4.0x, 4.1 and 4.2x my smart playlists with live updating were broken. It would start with track 1 of 5, then 2 of 4, then 3 of 3, 4 of 2, then would generally crash the iPod app. If I left the playlist and re-entered it would have removed the entries already played, but I would find that some of the entries that should have played had actually been skipped in m playlist.
With iOS 4.3, my playlists are properly working for me again. Now they play 1 of 5, 2 of 5, 3 of 5, ... If I return to the playlist while it is playing, I see that the entries that have already played are removed, and if I leave the playlist to return later, it starts over a 1 of 2, 2 of 2...
I have posted another thread of how I have my playlists defined, so perhaps that would help you. I do recall that there were some conditions that used to cause problems if used in a smart playlist.

Music + Video Kind is not 'Music Video' incompatible in smart playlists

When iTunes introduced [Videos], they started showing up in my [Smart Playlists] used to maintain [Music] (too many to list). I was able to correct this by adding:
[Playlist] is [Music]
...to all playlists.
However, [Music Videos] still show up in my music playlists. This is particularly a problem because, using [Rivet], every playlist that has any video of any kind gets added to the folder tree on [Xbox]>iTunes>Videos which clutters it significantly. I expected that:
Match All
[Video Kind] is not [Music Video]
[Playlist] is [Music]
(and all other criteria)
...would fix this, but it doesn't; instead everything disappears-- I've tried the two in isolation too. I'm guessing as soon as you add [Video Kind] to a smart playlist, it dedicates that playlist to [Video] only making the criteria [Video Kind] is {...} AND [Playlist] is [Music] incompatible. However, in this case, these criteria should coexist IMO. Also, most of these playlists require "Match All" to be selected.
There are two workarounds if anyone has the same beef:
1) Change all music videos' [Media Kind] to [Video], and just store them there. Not the ideal use of iTunes library system, but doable.
2) Create another smart playlist called 'Music Videos' where [Video Kind] is [Music Video] and then add [Playlist] is not [Music Videos] to every music playlist.
Anyway, just thought I'd put it out there. Is the suggestion reasonable that these two criteria should be able to coexist? Am I using iTunes wrong or is there a better way to solve this problem?
Based on how I see it now, I hope someone at Apple will fix this. Add a [MEDIA Kind] criterion, ditch the [Video Kind] criterion, and make this aspect more intuitive (and consistent with the classification of library entries-- ie [Video Kind] doesn't exist anywhere in the scheme but [Media Kind] does). Either that or just make a way to choose an optional super criterion for every smart playlist's [Media Type], then we could use "Match All" vs "Match Any" much more effectively.
Thanks for listenin.

Very cool- that worked, thank you! I didn't know that was even an option, and it must have popped up sometime after I bought my iPod Photo in 2005. And I would guess that the iPod Photo ignores that setting, since it worked just fine on that device, but nothing since then.
One question- I was able to bulk-edit my three Podcast groups by clicking on the group header and applying to all. But will each subsequent Podcast (I get at least 2 new ones each day) default back to Skip, and periodically I'll have to go back and re-edit the groups? Or since I edited at Group level, does iTunes make that setting sticky for that category?
Thanks,
Jeff

Mystery Podcasts Keep Showing Up in Smart Playlists

I use Smart Playlists to listen to Podcasts on my iPod Shuffles. It worked fine literally for years, but recently something changed.
Now when I make a Smart Playlist (I enter "Media Kind is Podcast")I get all my newly downloaded Podcasts, but I also get a list of about 50 podcasts that I deleted a long time ago. They are marked in the Smart Playlist as unavailable - iTunes says that it doesn't know where these Podcasts are located.
The problem is that they really don't exist at all. The original files are gone. They don't show up in Itunes (of course). They are also nowhere on my computer. I've done manual searches - looking through hundreds of folders where they might be located. I've also used the Windows Explorer Search feature to try to locate these files. They simply aren't anywhere on any of my hard drives. Therefore, I can't tell iTunes where they are located and I can't delete them. I can't delete them because they have already been deleted.
Yet, there is a reference to them in my iTunes library database file. There must be, or why would they keep showing up in a Smart Playlist? This is a real problem for me because it means I can't use Smart Playlists for my podcasts anymore.
Can anyone suggest a way to remove these podcast filenams from the iTunes database?
Thanks!
Doug

Hi, Katrina.
I just wanted to report back on what happened.
I created a new Smart Playlist with the parameters "Media Kind is Podcast", and just like always, I got a list of all my curent podcasts plus about fifty or so of these phantom podcasts.
I selected one of these phantom podcasts and tried Alt-Delete, but that didn't do anything. Just hitting Delete didn't do anything either. Nor did Ctrl-Delete. However, Shift-Delete worked like a charm. I got this message:
"Are you sure you want to remove the selected podcast from your iTunes library? This podcast will also be removed from any iPod or iPhone which synchronizes with your iTunes library."
I clicked on the "Remove" button (my options were "Remove" and "Cancel"). The podcast name vanished from the playlist and apparently it was also removed from the library database, because when I created another podcast Smart Playlist, that phantom podcast did not reappear.
I then went through the entire Smart Playlist and selected all of the phantom podcasts. I hit shift-delete, clicked on "Remove" and they all vanished and none of them returned. My Smart Playlists are back to normal and the problem is gone.
Apparently, Shift-Delete is the command for deleting podcasts (and songs, I assume) directly from a playlist. This works even if the orignal file has already been deleted and the listing is just a phantom listing in the database.
Whether Shift-Delete to delete directly from a playlist works on all computers, I don't know. It certainly worked on mine, which is a PC.
Thanks again, Katrina!
Doug

Exclamation marks in smart playlists

I have created a few smart playlists that select a number of episodes from my podcasts.
They work pretty well, except that I get a lot of ancient episodes (in the smart playlist) that are no longer on my disk and, therefore, all have an exclamation mark in the first column.
I have no idea where iTunes gets the idea it should display these episodes in the smart playlist.
When i go to the podcast and look at the list of episodes, they are definitely not there.
And I am pretty sure that I have not messed with the files themselves.
Of course, I can't remove the entries from the smart playlists manually ;-(
I tried to delete the playlist and create a new one, and I have searched this forum, to no avail.
Does anyone have an idea or a hint what I could try?
Thanks a lot in advance.
Regards,
Gabriel.

I wanted to know your playlist settings as I thought I'd try them on my iTunes. Turns out it has created the playlist perfectly, only adding episodes to it that I have and not any that aren't there. There are even a couple of podcasts that have 1 or 2 older episodes I have kept, and they are there too.
So, it seems like your playlist settings are actually correct. So it is strange you are having the problem. I'll monitor my playlist, but to be honest, I don't know what to suggest as I am not having the problem myself. Sorry.

Smart Playlists on Zen Vision:M and Creative Media Organizer Software

I come from the iPod world, where, once a playlist is created in iTunes, the playlist is transferred to the iPod, and is automatically updated each time you sync. That's why it's called "smart" playlist.
I can create a smart playlist using the Creative Media Organizer software. It automatically updates the playlist, based on the rules I defined. However, the playlist created on the Media Organizer does NOT get transferred to the Vision:M player! What's the point in that?
I can, of course, copy the smart playlist to the Vision:M manually... but there are two HUGE problems with that...
) The smart playlist becomes a "static" playlist... it does not get updated when you sync -- the music in the playlist never changes (even though the original smart playlist is updated on each sync),
2) The software recopies the *music* back to the Vision:M each time you create a playlist! This means that it overwrites the music that was there, with the (same) music in the playlist!! This takes FOREVER, if there are a lot of titles in the playlist! This is obviously a brain-dead way of doing things! All the software/Vision:M needs to do, is to copy the actual music files that don't currently exist on the player, and then create a text file that contains the *location* of the music... in other words, an M3U playlist file! One of the (many) issues with doing things the way this software does it, is that each time a track appears in a separate playlist, a duplicate entry for that song appears in the Vision:M's music list! So, if you have 5 playlists, and each one contains "Mozart's 5th", then when you list all the songs on your Vision:M, you'll get 5 copies of "Mozart's 5th" listed! Dumb!
Any way around these problems? Can I have smart playlist that gets transferred to the player so that it contains only the songs I want? Does it *have* to recopy ALL the songs to the player, each time I create a playlist? Does it *have* to add duplicate entries to the list of files on my Vision:M?
Is the software *really* as dumb as I think it is, or am I just being a BDU (Brain Dead User)?

You can only automatically sync playlists using Windows Media Player 0 as far as I know. There's lots of other software out there that can use the Media Transfer Protocol of the Vision:M, but I'm not sure what they can do.
Creative's software is desperately lacking in the playlist sync area, so you're not being a BDU

ITunes Match Smart Playlists Don't Appear to Work

Hi all!
I was playing around with the smart playlists in iTunes last night, to try and keep an eye on how the sync to the cloud was progressing.
I created smart playlists with iCloud status is: duplicate, error, ineligible, local only, matched, purchased and uploaded.
Now, when I look at my full list of songs, I see the "ineligible" icon next to several items (mostly digital booklets) yet the ineligible playlist shows 0 entries. Similarly, directly after importing a CD, the tracks on the CD show "waiting", I would expect my "local only" playlist to show these items, but again, that playlist shows 0 entries. The only playlist that appears to work is the "duplicate" playlist
anyone else had this before? am i doing something wrong (likely!)
cheers!

UPDATE: so i was looking through some more, and here's another issue: I bought James Blunts album many many years ago. If I look at the "matched" playlist it shows "Goodbye My Lover" which is track 4/11, the remaining 10 tracks are in the "purchased" playlist. Checking the info on "Goodbye My Lover" show that it is "Purchased AAC audio file"
I've also bought the AC/DC box set from iTunes, and some of those tracks are showing in the "uploaded" playlist!
In "View Options" i enabled iCloud status and it's just all over the place! Music i've purchased (and subsequently added to iTunes from apple support allowing me to redownload purchases) are shown as "Uploaded" or "Matched", some songs from albums (imported) are matched and others uploaded. Parts of box sets are "uploaded", others are "matched" and others "purchased"...
what the?! I'm just confused! I'd like to use the option to upgrade my songs to the best quality (for my CD imports) and thought these playlists would help (actually a single button - "Upgrade" would be nice!) but they don't appear to be too accurate

Smart playlists don't sync onto iPhone 6, and some other serious problems

Am syncing my music library via cable from a Mac Book iTUnes library onto the iPhone. The songs are on the phone, but
- many songs are duplicated and greyed out
- some songs don't sync at all and have a "download from the cloud" symbol next to them
- some songs are greyed out AND have a "download from the cloud" symbol next to them
- none of my roughly 30 smart playlists and one regular playlist are synced, There are only two standard entries "Genius Playlis" and "New Playlist".
- have tried manually syncing playlists by deselecting "sync all" and just checking one to be synced, but it won't sync either
- there is a mismatch in song count. ITunes on the Mac has 1415 songs, iTunes n the iPHone has 1024 songs
What's going on?????

Tried all the solutions but later found that the problem was related to iTunes being unable to find the link to the original file.
In iTunes, click on the Music icon at top left of screen, which should bring up the list of your music, artist, album etc.if you see an exclamation mark next to each file, it may be that the link to the location of your music file is lost. You need to right click on the track name and click GET INFO, then search through your computer to find the location of the missing file. I did this for a few tracks and then iTunes helpfully (?) asked if i would like it to do the rest of my music for me.
Then went back t iTunes and SYNCED as normal. I am not a techo type but hope this is helpful for others. Happy New Year

Refreshing your Smart Playlists....

Quite new to iTunes and really enjoying the power of the playlist and the way it changes how I listen to music. But...
Being new I'm still playing and experimenting with Smart Playlists which means I'm making lots of changes - e.g. you change the conditions of a playlist (say add a previously excluded Genre or lower the rating required for entry) OR you change some tags in your main library which would make previously excluded songs eligible. If your playlists are 'bounded' in anyway (I limit some of mine to 1.5 hours to fit the journey time to work), the playlists just seem to ignore the new possibilities and don't refresh?
If the changed conditions affect what CAN be included it works OK but if you open up more possibilities for what COULD be picked then nothing happens? I find myself having to remove the 'limit' function, press OK and then go back in and put the limit back on - just to get a refreshed list.
So either that's the only way or I'm about to get a barrage of replies starting "You idiot..."
Thanks..

I do yes - and like I say it works when there's no
'limit' condition or you change a condition that now
excludes certain songs, just not when you give it
more songs to pick from....
Actually, it always works, you're just not understanding the way in which it works.
The "limit" condition places a limit on what songs can appear in the resulting playlist. That limit condition also offers a "sort" method built into it. So you can limit to 50 songs sorted by artist, which means that it takes the result set, sorts by artist, then chops off the top 50 to make the list. Simple, really.
So if you're adding things that make it to the bottom of that sort, then it gets chopped off. If you're adding things to the top of the sort, it will get included.
Now, I suspect you're sorting by "random" which is it's own beast. These random sorts happen only when the content of the playlist itself changes. So when you change the library such that something is removed from the result set, it has to resort and do the limit again, since the playlist must be recalculated. But when you change the library such that something is added, the playlist is not recalculated because the content of the list itself did not change. Nothing was removed. Nothing was added *to the list*. The list still falls within the boundry conditions given for it. Removing a song from it would change the list such that it falls outside the boundries, being short of the limit. But adding new possible songs to choose from doesn't change the list itself, it still works.
So yeah, in that case, you must force it. A simple way to force it to recalculate a "live updating" smart playlist is simply to delete all the contents of the list. Hit CTRL-A and then DEL while looking at the list. This won't remove those songs as possibilities from the list, but it will make the list fall outside of the boundry conditions set for it, which forces the recalculation.
The reason for all this is the "random" sort method. Likely you don't want the playlist contents changing every time you look at the list, or every second, or what have you. So it only changes the list and resorts randomly when it has no other choice. If it doesn't have to do a random sort to make the list work, it won't do it.

Is there a way to make a smart "playlist" of specific books in my iTunes library, and copy ONLY THOSE books to an iOS device? I own an iPad and an iPhone but I want different books on different devices.

Is there a way to make a smart "playlist" of specific books in my iTunes library, and copy ONLY THOSE books to an iOS device? I own an iPad and an iPhone but I want different books on each different device. When I've tried this, the iOS devices don't seem to respond.

There is no playlist for iBooks, butther eis nothing to preent you from choosing to download specific titles from itunes, or syncing just specific titles to an individual device.

IPod no longer updates smart playlists after upgrade to 1.3

After upgrading my 5th Gen 30GB iPod to 1.3 I noticed immediately that the smart playlists on my iPod aren't updating any longer. Until 3 days ago my iPod had firmware version 1.2.1 and all smart playlists worked as expected.
I have many smart playlists that I have been happily using everyday for the past 2 years to play only new podcasts, shuffle my favorite tunes based on when they have been played last, and move songs in and out of My Top rated tunes based on their ratings. These no longer work on my iPod, but when I sync with iTunes they update fine. I didn't make any changes to my smart playlists before or immediately after upgrading, at least until I noticed the problem.
For the last couple of days since upgrading I have tried deleting all my smart playlists and recreating them, that didn't help. I have also tried restoring my iPod, which also didn't help. I have also tried creating a very basic smart playlist i.e.
Match all of the following rules - checked
Rating is ***
Live updating - checked
Sync'd that to my iPod and started playing a tune and changed it's rating to 5 stars. I then entered a static playlist, played a song from that and when it was done entered the new 5 star rating smart playlist and it wasn't updated.
I'm don't know what else to try, I've repeated the same test as above on my wife's 2nd Gen nano and it worked as expected. Has anyone else noticed smart playlists failing to update since the upgrade? I have searched here and on google, but only found reference to much older firmwares.

I'm having the same problem, once I've listened to a song in my 0 plays list, go out to a new menu, then back in, all the songs that have been played are still there, when a few weeks ago they were taken off and only unplayed songs were still there. Now if I switch to another playlist and back, I have to scroll all the way back to the point I was when I changed which didn't happen earlier.

Multiple Artist, Genre... Separator (Semi-Colon) instead of Smart Playlists

In my opinion, one of the greatest features of ID3 tags is the ability to use semi-colons to differentiate between multiple artists, genres, albums, etc... for any given field. This feature has been available since ID3 tags for MP3's were first implemented over a decade ago.
With Windows Media Player 10, it's database was finally able to parse the information separated by semi-colons correctly. What this means is that if I have a song like "Picture" by Sheryl Crow and Kid Rock, in the ID3 tag, I type "Sheryl Crow; Kid Rock", and in WMP, if I click on Artist | Sheryl Crow, "Picture" appears. And if I click on Artist | Kid Rock, "Picture" appears. In fact, when I rip songs using WMP, it places semi-colons in numerous ID3 fields from the album description.
In iTunes, however, when I import a song with a semi-colon in an ID3 tag field, the database reads the artist as "Sheryl Crow; Kid Rock", or essentially, it treats "Sheryl Crow; Kid Rock" as a THIRD artist. The same is true if I have a song that I feel crosses two genres--like "Picture". In WMP, if I put in the Genre field "Pop; Country", when I choose Genres | Pop, "Picture" appears, and when I choose Genres | Country, "Picture" appears.
Does anyone know if a bug fix for this is in the works for iTunes? It seems Apple and iTunes have been trying to push Smart Playlists for this kind of organization, but that's the poor man's way of organizing songs and not nearly as efficient. I don't want to have to create Smart Playlist for all songs with "Sheryl Crow" in the artist field. It should be inherent based on the semi-colon.
Does anyone know if anything smarter than Smart Playlists is in the works that matches the intuitiveness of Windows Media Player's database?
Thanks,
Bill

Whereas in WMP & the ID3 spec. you would use a semi-colon to separate items you will find that iTunes & the Music store use a slash instead. However as you so rightly say iTunes takes the information and construes a new artist entity rather than two artists connected to the same track. (WMP might also respond to slash - I recall AC/DC always presenting issues so they exist as AC-DC in my library.)
If you'd like to make feature request go to: iTunes Feedback.
Working on the assumption that such ideas are unlikely to implemented any time soon however you might like to see my post on Grouping Tracks Into Albums which covers workarounds for this & other quirks.
tt2

ITunes 6.0.1.3 smart playlist and rating problem

I noticed my iPod playlists don't update live anymore, so I checked their settings in iTunes and found that, for some reason, there are no stars listed in the smart playlist.
I deleted them all and tried to start fresh. I click File > New Smart Playlist. In the first combo box I choose "My Rating", in the second combo box I choose "is", and in the third field, I can't do anything--not even click to set a rating. It's just blank.
Does anyone have any idea what is going on?

Okay, apparently the stars are still there, I just can't see them. If I click where the 5th star should be, then it adds songs rated with 5 stars.
I do see the stars in the regular library listing. Why can't I see them in the smart playlist?
This doesn't explain why my iPod doesn't do live updating anymore. Hmm.

Phantom entries on 'smart' playlists

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